In this edition of the virtual classroom I'll introduce a method of finding
chords on the mountain dulcimer, and talk a bit about their use in playing
accompaniments. I'm not going to present a long list of chord diagrams for
you to memorize, rather, I'll give you the tools to work these out on your
own. A good reference for this topic is Jerry
Rockwell's book, Music
Theory and Chord Reference for the Mountain Dulcimer. I'd also suggest
you check out the Chordal
Explorations in D-A-D page of his site.

The mountain dulcimer, in its traditional form, is a dronal, not
a chordal instrument. By this I mean that the "traditional"
style of play for the mountain dulcimer consists of a single line of melody
played against a "drone" consisting of (usually) the root and
the fifth of the key in which the melody is played. In practice, what this
means is that the performer plays the melody on a single string, or often,
on a single pair of strings tuned to the same note, and the bass and middle
stings remain unfretted, sounding the key note of the tune (the root) and
a note an interval of a perfect fifth above the root continuously during
the tune. Some early instruments didn't even have frets under the bass and
middle strings.

Modern mountain dulcimers have full width frets, and so can be played
in a chordal style as well. That is, the performer plays a set of
harmonically related tones simultaneously (chords) at various parts of the
tune in some kind of arrangement that is pleasing to the ear. (a chord pattern)

Chordal playing is not "better" or "more advanced"
than dronal playing. It isn't even "more innovative." It
is, perhaps, a bit more difficult, since there is a little more to keep
track of in terms of finger placement. However, good dronal playing is a
skill that is not to be scoffed at either. The drones tend to emphasize
the beat and can result in a strength of feeling that is difficult to match
with chordal playing.

So, what is a chord, anyway?

A chord is simply two or more notes played at the same time, that have
a harmonic relationship. A major triad, one of the simplest type
of chords, consists, as you might expect, of three notes. The root
is the note that is the chord name, i.e., an "A" chord or an "A-major
" chord has the "A" note as its root. Simple, right? The
major triad also has a note that is a musical interval of a major third
above the root. A major third consists of two full steps. On your dulcimer,
a full step is the interval between two of the "wide gap" frets,
for example, between the "1" fret and the "2" fret.
If you count up from the root, it is the third note in a major scale, counting
the root as "one." The third note in the triad is a perfect
fifth above the root. This is the fifth note in a major scale above
the root, or a total of three full steps and a half step above the root.
A half step on your dulcimer is the interval between two "narrow gap"
frets, the "2" and the "3" frets, for example.

Take, for example, a D-major chord. The root, naturally, is a D. If your
dulcimer is tuned to DAd, then you can find this note on the open fret of
either your bass, or melody strings. Counting that note as "one,"
go up the fret board. The note at the first fret is "two" and
the note on the second fret is "three." This, then is the major
third, the F-sharp (F#). Continuing up the fretboard, we find the perfect
fifth is at the four fret, the A. Therefore, the three notes in a D-major
triad are D, F#, and A.

Following the same procedure for an A-major triad, we find it's notes
are A, C#, and E. For a G-major triad the notes are G, B, and D. Following
this procedure, you can determine the notes in any major triad you might
need.

Clear as mud?

Here is a line of notes in "chromatic"
order, i.e., all the sharps and flats in order. The sharped notes are shown
with their equivalent flat version (their "enharmonic") below
them. For example, an A-sharp is the same note as a B-flat. (Bb) Below that
is a graphical representation of the intervals between the root, the major
third, and the perfect fifth. I'll call this part the "interval
ruler," and the combination of it with the chromatic scale is a
"chord slide rule."

At the moment it's pointing to the notes in the A major triad. If you
were to move the interval ruler so that the "R" points to the
(for instance) D, the other two lines in the ruler point to the other notes
in a D-major triad.

If your make a copy of the scale and the interval ruler you can use it
to find the notes that make up any major triad, but hold on doing that for
just a bit. There's more to music than major triads, there's also minor
chords, for instance.

A minor triad is built almost the same
as the major triad, with one exception. The minor triad has a root and a
fifth are the same as in the major triad, but the third is, naturally enough,
a minor third instead of a major third. An interval of a minor
third is one and a half full steps, or the distance of a "wide"
fret plus a "narrow" fret on your dulcimer. There is a minor third
from the first fret to the third fret, for example. Minor chords are shown
with a small m after the chord letter, Em, or F#m, for example.

Below is the two octave scale and the interval ruler modified so that
it shows the minor third as well as the major third.

Now you can find either major or minor chords by sliding the interval
ruler along the scale so that the R points to the chord you need. If you
want a major chord, use the note that the "3" is pointing to.
If a minor chord is what you need, then use the note above the lower case
"m" (for minor). In the case of the Am chord, as shown above,
the note you need to play are the A, the C, and the E.

This is all very well and good, but how do you
find the notes on your dulcimer once you know what notes to look for? The
diagram below is one solution.

This shows the letter name of the note that will sound at each fret on
your dulcimer in DAd tuning, up to fret 11. If you need to play an A major
chord, for example, the note you found using the scale and interval ruler
are A, C#, and E. On the fret board map you see that you have an A on the
fourth fret of the bass string, a C# at the second fret of the middle string,
and an E at the first fret of the melody string. Therefore you now know
that a 4 - 2 - 1 chord is an A major. There are other possibilities as well,
4 - 4 - 6+ for example, and 8 - 7 - 6+ are all A major chords. These fingerings
all have all three of the notes in an A major triad.

It's not always necessary to have all three notes in the triad for it
to form the chord, however. A 1 - 0 - 1 chord has no C#, just Es and an
A, but it often works well as an A chord. It is not always even necessary
for the root to be present in the chord for it to sound OK. I will some
times use a 0 - 1 - 0 chord as a G major, even though it does not itself
contain a G. It has the major third of a G chord, (the B, on the middle
string) and it has the fifth of the chord ( the D on the open bass and melody
strings.) Be aware, however, that such fragments are ambiguous in their
identity. This particular fingering may also be used as a B minor chord,
because it has the root on the middle string, and the minor third of the
chord on the bass and melody strings. Whether it works as a G chord or a
Bm depends on the context of the music in which it appears.

Here's another trick I learned from Jerry
Rockwell. Say you want to see where you can play D chords. You can slide
your interval ruler along your chromatic scale and see that you need a D,
an F#, and an A for this chord. You can then search through the fretboard
map above for the locations of these notes to work out your chord fingerings.

Or you could use this information to make a chart like the one below.

This is what Jerry calls a Chord Constellation. If you put your
fingers down anywhere there is a dot and strum across the strings, the result
is some kind of D chord, or D chord fragment. These chord constellations
can be very useful when you are learning chord positions.

If you play in the key of D, the chords you are most likely to need are
the D, G, and A7 chords. These are the chords built on the root, fourth,
and fifth of the scale. They're also called I IV V Chords

A7?

Ah yes, we haven't discussed seventh chords yet, have we? Well,
a seventh chord is a four note chord that contains all the notes
we've used so far in major or minor triads, and adds an additional note
that is, not surprisingly, an interval of a seventh (a flat seventh technically
speaking) above the root. On your dulcimer this is the distance from the
open string to the sixth fret.

To play an A7 you need to have a G in the chord, along with the A, C#,
and E. Unless you have a dulcimer setup for four equidistant strings, you
can't play a complete seventh chord, you are always having to omit at least
one of the notes.

Here is a chord constellation for A7

The open dots are the ones that make it a seventh chord. It has to have
one of these or it sounds like a plain old A major instead of an A7. (Which
is not necessarily bad.)

While we're at it, here are the chord constellations for G major, B minor,
and E minor.

So, what if I don't use DAd
tuning?

The basic principles shown above apply to any tuning. If you use something
other than DAd, the fretboard map and the chord constellations will be different,
however. You'd have to make up your own.

For example, lets say you like to play in the key of B, and you use an
"Ionian" type of tuning. (I hate referring to tunings by mode
names, but that's another article.) In this case you'd tune your dulcimer
to B F# F#, and the fretboard map would look like this:

And a chord constellation for an E major chord would look like this:

Notice that I marked the tuning, the chord and the fact that this is
the IV chord of a B Major scale. As long as you are in a 155 tuning like
this one, the chord constellations will be the same for the IV chord regardless
of what key you are actually tuned into. If you were tuned to DAA, the IV
chord would be a G, and this would be the chord constellation for a G Major
chord in that tuning.

Personally, at this point I am so familiar with my fretboard in DAd tuning,
that if I tune to some other key I usually pretend I'm still in the key
of D, and translate as needed. For example, on my second CD, Shaker's Fancy, I play the Bach
Minuet in G from the Anna Magdalena notebook. I do this on a baritone dulcimer
that is actually tuned to a low AEA, so the actual performance of the piece
is in the key of A, instead of G. To be able to read the music, however
I transposed it to the key of D. Believe it or not, this worked.

As you gain familiarity with your dulcimer,
you eventually are able to remember the fretboard map and the chords on
your own. These techniques should help you get to that point more quickly
than simply memorizing chord fingerings. This will help you greatly when
you play accompaniments.

When you play an accompaniment, you are playing music that is in support
of some other line of melody. This might be a singer, another dulcimer,
or some other instrument. Accompanists typically do NOT play melody.

I've already touched briefly on the concept of I, IV, V chords, and I'll
expand just a bit about them now. In 90% or so of all major key folk music
the three chords you will need in a given tune are those built on the root
of the key in which the tune is played, the fourth of the scale, and the
fifth of the scale. In the key of D, these chords are D, G, and A. Usually,
for the V chord, you use a seventh chord, but not exclusively. So in the
key of D, the main chords to know are D, G, and A7. For the key of G they
are G, C, and D7. See the pattern? In the key of D, the fourth note of the
D major scale is a G, and the fifth note is an A. The same goes for the
key of G. The fourth note is a C, and the fifth note is a D.

An easy way to accompany another player is to simply play the chords
while the other musician is playing the melody. You could either strum along
in a rhythm pattern, or simply play a good solid single strum at the beginning
of the measure or every time the chord changes. In much printed music, the
chords are printed above the line of music notation, so if you learn your
chords well, you can follow the chord pattern this way. Playing a chordal
accompaniment is also an easy way to join in in a jam session when you don't
happen to know the tune that they're playing at that moment. Did I mention
Jerry Rockwell's Chordal
Explorations in D-A-D site? This would be a good time to check it out.

Another way to do this is to "cheat" off of the guitar player.
Many guitarists play chords in just about the same finger position every
time. This allows you to watch the guitarist's hand and tell what chord
he's playing and match him. To do this, you have to gain some familiarity
with what guitar chords "look" like as they're being played, but
this is really not that difficult.

Learning your chords is a skill that will expand the horizons of your
playing immeasurably. Once you know how to find the chords in a number of
different positions you are no longer limited to a single way of playing
through a piece of music. Skillful use of chords can add a depth of expression
to your music that cannot be matched otherwise.